In Ireland, O best beloved, Easter Monday is when pilgrims go to the wells.
And there are many wells indeed, some more holy than others, tucked behind old chapels, buried beneath hawthorn trees, or hidden in the folds of a bog. They say a saint once knelt there. Or a healing happened. Or a miracle rose through the limestone like bread dough when yeast is added and left in a warm place.
People go to the wells to do the rounds: walking sunwise around the well, three or nine times, laying down white stones, whispering prayers, tying red rags to the branches overhead.
But in a village in County Offaly, a quiet place where no one quite remembers the name of the saint, and the sign to the well fell off years ago, two girls walked the wrong way.
You see, O best beloved, it happened not so long ago. Or maybe longer. Who can say? But the girls had red ribbons in their hair and mischief in their eyes, the kind that still listens to things that speak softly from hedges and ponds and old stones.
They went at dawn, barefoot in dew. The pilgrims wouldnât come till noon. But there had been whispering that if they walked widdershins - against the sun -before the first bell of the day, something older would answer.
They circled the well nine times, silent. Their stones were not white. They didnât tie prayers with the ribbons to the hawthorn. They tied strands of their hair. And words they had heard in the wind that blew in March over the bullaun-stones up in Lemanaghan.
And when the water rose, it didnât shimmer.
It darkened.
Then the pilgrims arrived, at noon, and the well did not flow. The steps were wet, but no one had gone down. The treeâs branches were tangled with red, but not the kind of red that shines and warms.
The priest came. He blessed the water.
Nothing changed.
Only one woman, old Brigid, whose mother remembered the old name of the well, said, âSheâs taken it back.â
No one asked who she meant.
The girls never said what they heard in the roots.
Only that it had a womanâs voice.
âThis is my well. You only borrowed it.â
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